Let’s start with a comforting lie: we are in control of our own decisions.
When we choose an agent, set a fee, approve a marketing campaign or sign a contract, we’re doing so rationally – calmly, logically, and based on facts.
But we aren’t.
For decades, psychologists have been dismantling this idea. Humans don’t weigh information objectively; we use mental shortcuts. They’re fast, efficient, and usually subconscious… and they introduce systematic errors into our thinking.
In other words, much of the time we are not driving the car. We’re sitting in the passenger seat, confidently explaining a journey our subconscious has already chosen.
This matters more than we might like to admit, particularly in business.
Why smart business owners still get it wrong
Estate agents are no exception. In fact, we may be especially vulnerable.
Ours is an industry built on experience, instinct and confidence. All useful qualities, but they can also be a perfect breeding ground for bias.
Take the phrase “I know my customers”. It sounds reassuring – sensible, even. Yet it often masks one of the most dangerous traps in business: assuming other people think, feel and decide the way we do.
If you don’t care about social media, your vendors don’t either. If you don’t read newsletters, they won’t either. If you’d choose the agent with the best website, surely everyone else would too – right?
Once that belief forms, we are susceptible to confirmation bias; we start noticing only the evidence that supports our view and subconsciously filtering out anything that challenges it. A poor campaign becomes proof that “direct mail doesn’t work around here”; a few quiet days on Instagram confirms that “buyers don’t engage with video”.
And then there’s the Dunning-Kruger effect – the tendency for people with limited knowledge to overestimate their own competence, while true experts tend to underestimate theirs. It’s why the loudest voices in the room aren’t always the most informed, and why humility is often a better predictor of long-term success than absolute certainty.
Why the biggest brands don’t trust their gut
What’s interesting is that the world’s most successful brands don’t operate in this way at all.
Coca-Cola doesn’t decide its marketing based on what the board thinks of fizzy drinks; Nike doesn’t ask the CEO for feedback on its high tops.
They invest relentlessly in understanding their customers’ behaviour: what they respond to, how they make decisions, which messages land, and which fall flat. Not because they’re less engaged with their customers, but because they know that they are not the customer.
Big brands don’t confuse anecdotes with insight, they don’t mistake experience for evidence, and they don’t assume that confidence equals correctness.
From guesswork to genuine understanding
This is where comprehensive customer data changes how a business operates from top to bottom.
Tools like Experian’s Mosaic, with its 850 million data sources and 950 customer variables for every single UK household, exist to replace guesswork with evidence. Not by labelling people, but by recognising that different people respond to risk, authority, messaging and change in fundamentally different ways.
The same letter, the same valuation script, the same social media post can reassure one person and alienate another. Understanding customers at this level isn’t about being clever or analytical; it’s just about being accurate.
Your customers aren’t rational either
Of course, it’s not just business owners who are biased; our customers are too.
When a vendor sticks to the first valuation they hear and struggles to adjust away from it, that’s anchoring bias at work. When sellers resist reducing a price because accepting less feels like they’re losing something they never had in the first place, that’s loss aversion. When buyers gravitate toward the company they are most familiar with (regardless of service quality), that’s familiarity bias.
When a polished brand is assumed to be better simply because it looks the part, that’s the halo effect. When urgency suddenly spikes because “there are other interested parties”, that’s scarcity and fear of missing out doing their thing. Social proof makes them feel safer. Framing changes how fees are perceived. A service described as “keeping 98% of your sale price” feels very different to one described as “charging 2% commission”.
None of this is malicious, deceitful, or underhand – it’s just understanding how humans work. And yes, using it to the betterment of your business.
We all know that customers don’t always choose the “best” agent. They choose the one that feels safest, most competent, and most familiar. The one that reduces anxiety and aligns with their emotional expectations in that moment.
Understanding cognitive bias isn’t about trickery.
It’s about designing better experiences, clearer communication, marketing that resonates rather than irritates, fee conversations that acknowledge emotion instead of pretending it doesn’t exist, recognising that people don’t behave like spreadsheets. Logic plays a role, but far less than we like to believe.
The real competitive advantage
The real risk isn’t that we’re biased – that’s a given. The risk lies in believing that we aren’t.
The moment we stop saying “I know my customer” and start asking “What does the evidence actually show?”, things change. Marketing becomes more effective, coherent decisions are made, and our businesses become more resilient.
We may never be fully in control of our own minds, but recognising that fact is the closest thing to control we’re ever going to get.
Toby Martin is Chief Content Officer at We Are Unchained.